Remnants
by Omnicat
Summary: There was a figure stood by the coffee maker, dark and blurry – from the brightness of the morning light, the aftereffects of sleep, the absence of her glasses – but as familiar as her own heartbeat. Smiling, Lora let her eyes slide closed and her weight sag against his side, and he caught her like something from a dream. She never wanted to wake up.


**Title:** Remnants

 **Author:** Omnicat

 **Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge:** _Tron_ & _Tron: Legacy_.

 **Warnings:** Character death.

 **Characters & Relationships:** Lora x Rinzler, past Lora x Alan and Tron x Yori

 **Summary:** There was a figure stood by the coffee maker, dark and blurry – from the brightness of the morning light, the aftereffects of sleep, the absence of her glasses – but as familiar as her own heartbeat. Smiling, Lora let her eyes slide closed and her weight sag against his side, and he caught her like something from a dream. She never wanted to wake up. **/ 1302 words**

 **Author's Note:** Written for the Tron Fandom Ship Week on tumblr, theme: Reality. Enjoy!

 **II-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-I-oOo-I-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-II**

 **Remnants**

The alarm. Eugh.

Lora thrust out an arm. The strength left the movement almost instantly, but by then the weight of her forearm had lodged itself on the nightstand, and she was able to grope around with just her fingers until she found the snooze button.

What felt like only a second later, the alarm was blaring again. Lora even didn't remember having pulled her arm back into the warm cocoon of blankets.

The whole tiresome operation began anew.

This time she turned the alarm off and struggled upright. Made her way to the kitchen, propelled entirely by the momentum of not letting the sway of her previous step tip her over.

There was a figure stood by the coffee maker, dark and blurry – from the brightness of the morning light, the aftereffects of sleep, the absence of her glasses – but as familiar as her own heartbeat. Smiling, Lora let her eyes slide closed and her weight sag against his side, and he caught her like something from a dream.

She never wanted to wake up.

 **I-oOo-I**

She called in sick to work that day.

Rinzler hadn't even flinched when she opened her eyes and shoved him back against the dish rack, screaming.

 **I-oOo-I**

The lack of food started getting to her around three, so she unlocked the bedroom door and peeked out into the hallway. The door to the guest room was closed.

The house was deadly quiet as she made herself toast and tea, and a salad and scrambled eggs once she was sure her stomach could handle it. That morning's summer sunshine had given way to roiling clouds so thick it looked like night was falling early. It was a relief to Lora's aching eyes. She'd cried so hard and for so long, she didn't think they would stop burning until tomorrow morning.

When she put her dishes away to dry, she noticed the dish rack was awfully empty. She checked the trashcan and found a pile of shards. That, and a bloodied dish cloth.

Right. Shattering dishes. She _had_ noticed that, but she just...

God.

Lora pressed her hands over her eyes, but there were no more tears now. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she got the first aid kit from underneath the sink and headed upstairs.

She knocked. "Rinzler?"

She waited. After a moment, the guest room door opened.

Every inch of him was Alan, and yet not. Alan's tall, lean form with the posture of a stranger, Alan's familiar face cracked in half by a scar slightly too angular to look real, Alan's lovely eyes in a bright, unnatural hue of burnt orange. They would have been beautiful if they weren't so _wrong_. If there wasn't a completely alien personality looking out of them.

"Can I have a look at your hand? There are specific procedures for the treatment of wounds in this world that you didn't follow."

Rinzler nodded, silently, and followed her into the bathroom.

"Are you hurt anywhere else?" she asked as she adjusted the tap until it yielded a soft, lukewarm stream.

Rinzler shook his head.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have pushed you. There's no excuse," she said mechanically.

Rinzler said nothing.

"Give me your hand. This might sting."

He wasn't Alan, but she couldn't help but savour the feel of his skin. The warm, solid weight of it, the way he moved as she pried open his clenched fist and guided it under the water. His fingers twitched, and he let out a surprised hiss. The first sound out of him all day. She cupped his hand in one of hers and with the other, gently rubbed at the congealed blood in his palm, his fingers, the back of his hand. The actual cuts didn't look that bad or deep, but he'd made a mess of it.

Lora wet a washcloth and rubbed a bit more firmly. Rinzler let out a harsh breath through his nose. His brow was furrowed and his mouth upturned in the exact semi-pout Alan used to make in the face of unpleasant things like phone calls from his parents or getting rained on or her lasagna when he thought she wasn't looking.

Suddenly this seemed like a really bad idea.

Swaying on her feet, Lora leaned her hip against the sink and clasped both hands around Rinzler's. Her eyes started watering anew.

"Pain," she croaked, staring at the collar of Rinzler's – Alan's – shirt and blinking rapidly. "On the Grid, is pain... like this?"

Her ears were ringing with the way Rinzler woke up screaming in the middle of the night. Screaming with Alan's voice. Screaming for mercy, for forgiveness, for his User, for death, for another woman – if he managed any words at all between the blood-curdling howls.

Rinzler lay his uninjured hand over hers. "He didn't suffer."

Lora pulled back as if burned.

 **I-oOo-I**

The wedding picture that once stood front and center on the mantlepiece in the living room was now on Lora's nightstand. She stared at it every night until she fell asleep, so she wouldn't be tempted to turn around and see Alan's side of the bed, empty.

The picture was only five years old. It had taken Flynn's disappearance and a brush with a full-blown burn-out courtesy of Encom for Lora to come back from DC and Alan to pop the question she had never realised had been on the tip of his tongue from the day they met.

She should have taken his name.

Would they have had babies? Was that another thing Alan had secretly wanted but never brought up because Lora showed no great interest?

She would never even _know_.

Every night now, she fell asleep staring at their wedding picture. Every night she was woken up by Rinzler's nightmares and pressed her pillow over her ears until the screaming and the images of Alan on the Grid without her, dying a thousand distinct deaths, stopped.

The only difference that night was the realisation that she couldn't imagine the sound of Alan's voice anymore. Rinzler never sounded more like him than when he was screaming. His indoor voice held a burr like ten years of cigarettes, or something dragged across the rocks for miles and miles.

Lora scooted over to Alan's side of the bed and closed her eyes and ears to everything.

 **I-oOo-I**

"I want a faster tutorial."

"You want to leave?"

"I want the ability to."

"But not to _actually_ leave."

"No."

"Why? There's plenty of ways to learn, lots better teachers, why stay at all?"

"You know why."

"Really."

"Don't ask questions you don't want to hear the answer to. Isn't that a User saying?"

 **I-oOo-I**

It never entirely left the forefront of her mind that she could simply _make_ him leave. Probably _should_ make him leave. Having him in the home she built with Alan was unhealthy to the extreme.

But where would he go? Not back to the computer, to be used again. Not to that thieving liar Flynn, who caused the annihilation of his world, of his body and mind, of everything he loved, not once but twice over.

Rinzler wasn't Alan-the-man-she-loved, but he was Alan the disillusioned Knight Templar, Alan on the far end of a century of hell, Alan bent and twisted by the whims of a madman in so many ways it was a miracle he could still be so – no. Stop. Breathe. Be calm.

Rinzler wasn't Alan screaming in the night. But as much as it hurt to look at him, she couldn't just throw him to the wolves.

 **I-oOo-I**

"You realise that the longer you stay with me, the greater the odds that you'll have to pretend to be Alan to his friends and family?"

"Yes."

"You realise that you _aren't_ Alan. You never will be."

"As you aren't Yori. Does it matter?"


End file.
